In his otherwise unremarkable 1932 debut play Dangerous Corner, JB Priestley employs a promising framing device that hints at the kind of metafictional experimentation found in works like Stoppard’s The Real Thing or Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author.

I should hasten to add that Priestley does not deliver on this glimmer of promise – in fact, the frame is merely used to emphasise a theme already overstated in his plodding drawing-room whodunnit – but it’s indicative of an early work in which the writer is still figuring out the bounds of his new medium.